Project Cyclops, A Design... - Department of Earth and Planetary ...

Lookingfar ahead,supposewe aresuccessful in
controllingour fecundity, in recycling our wastes, and
in developing new energy sources. Will we then accept
forever the ceiling on our growth imposed by the finite
size of Earth? Will we be content to know forever only
one advanced life form-ourselves? Or will such stasis
sap us of our lust? In other words, after ecology,
what?
BIO-COSMOLOGY
We can, of course, continue to probe the universe,
the atom, and ourselves. But so long as our cosmology
is limited to unraveling the evolution of the physical
universe and our molecular biology to unraveling the
complex chemistry of Earth-based life alone, so long as
we are limited to physical cosmology and to geocentric
biology, many enormously exciting and very fundamental
questions will remain unanswered; these include:
1. Are we alone? Is Earth unique not only in the
solar system but in the universe? Failure to dis.
cover other life could never answer this question
in the affirmative, but the discovery of only one
other race would provide the needed counterexample
and supply at least partial answers to questions
that follow.
2. How prevalent is life in the universe? Over what
range of environmental conditions can it occur?
3. Is |t the result of independent starts, or are
planets
"seeded"?
4. Is the biochemistry of life unique or are there
alternatives to DNA?
5. What is the typical longevity of planetary cultures?
6. Are evolving life forms very sensitive chemically
and morphologically to small differences in environmental
factors, or does there tend to be an
optimum design for a highly evolved species? In
other words is evolution highly divergent or convergent?
7. Is interworld communication common or exceptional;
does a galactic community of cultures
exist?
8. Is there interstellar space travel, or merely intercommunication?
9. Does life itself serve a role in the evolution of the
physical universe, perhaps modifying it in some
way; or does it exist completely at the mercy of
the latter?
10. What is our destiny? Do cultures survive the
death of their primary stars? Of a collapsing
universe?
These are only a few of the many questions that
might be answered by, and perhaps only by, establishing
contact with another race. The day this happens
will be the birthdate for us of a new science, which
we might
call biocosmology.
OUR GALACTIC HERITAGE
Since we are only recently able to signal over interstellar
distances, or to detect such signals, any race we
contact will be at least as advanced as we in the technologies
involved, and probably mote so. There are
thus some potentially valuable tutorial benefits to science
and technology from contact with other cultures.
However, the round trip delay times are apt to be on
the order of a century or more, so any information
exchange will not be in the form of a dialogue with
questions asked and answers given, but rather in the
nature of two semi-independent transmissions, each a
documentary exposition of the salient facts about the
society doing the sending-its planetary data, its life
forms, its age, its history, its most important knowledge
and beliefs, any other cultures it may have already
contacted, etc. Thus, although over the course of
a century or more we might receive a tremendous
amount of information, the rate of reception, the gaps
in the picture, and the effort needed to construct a
model of the other race from the data received would
prevent any violent cultural shock.
It seems virtually certain that if we are successful in
establishing interstellar contact we will not be the first
civilization to have done so. In fact it may well be that
interstellar communication has been going on in our
Galaxy ever since the first intelligent civilizations evolved
in large numbers some four or five billion years ago. One
of the consequences of such extensive heavenly discourse
would be the accumulation by all participants of
an enormous body of knowledge handed down from
race to race from the beginning of the communicative
phase. Included in this galactic heritage we might expect
to find the totality of the natural and social histories of
countless planets and the species that evolved: a sort of
cosmic archeological record of our Galaxy. Also
included would be astronomical data dating from several
aeons ago, perhaps pictures of our own and neighboring
galaxies taken by long dead races that would make plain
the origin and fate
of the universe.
If such a heritage exists it will not only illuminate our
future, but the past as well. Access to such a treasury
would certainly be worth the cost of Cyclops many
times over.
Far more important in the long run than the
"synchronization" of the scientific development of the
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